I realize what you're saying, potter, and I respect you for vocalizing it, but the conclusion that it leads to is one that I can't accept. Essentially, the line of thinking that you may or may not be knowingly espousing leads to nothing but the wholesale extermination of non-herbivorous companion animals, because it's not fair that they have a right to live their lives as well.

In a perfect world, we wouldn't be faced with this problem because there wouldn't be breeders creating more homeless companion animals, and nature could take it's course and we wouldn't exterminate any living being... but it's not a perfect world...

If I had the option of feeding my rescued ferrets (for example) a vegan diet and knew 100% that it wouldn't have a detrimental effect on their health, I'd do it in a heartbeat. It's really hard to be a compassionate vegan, and to work every day to battle the speciesism that was "educated" into me throughout my whole life, and not to look at my two ferrets who have done nothing wrong except for "being born", and think that they should die because they are obligate carnivores. Everything in me says I can't think that way, because it's speciesist to kill them, but yet it's speciesist to feed them, and it's a hard thing to deal with....

And yet, evolution is the byproduct of "the way it should be," which you are longing to exemplify, not "the way that it's been," which most people are locked into. - Bobby Rock

Then you could say your working on forcing the extinction livestock...although they get replaced.

You can never really say its fair to kill many animals for the good of one. I've seen people argue why they can't feed t heir animals vegan food and that makes sense but I've never heard anyone give a reasonable argument showing its more ethical to keep one animals alive while killing many others for the good of one. It just hasn't been done and I doubt it ever will be done within reason. All for one and one for all only works when all parties are voluntarily involved.

veganpotter wrote:Then you could say your working on forcing the extinction livestock...although they get replaced.

You can never really say its fair to kill many animals for the good of one. I've seen people argue why they can't feed t heir animals vegan food and that makes sense but I've never heard anyone give a reasonable argument showing its more ethical to keep one animals alive while killing many others for the good of one. It just hasn't been done and I doubt it ever will be done within reason. All for one and one for all only works when all parties are voluntarily involved.

Are animals actually killed for the purpose of making PET FOOD, or are these just scraps left over with the original intent to feed HUMANS?

ConanVegiBarbarian wrote:Some animals are natural born predators get over it!

Seriously get over it. As much as we need to be kind to animals and have the intellect and spiritual responsibility to minimize our impact on their habitats and territory --- animals don't have the same set of ethical responsibility or conscience we do. Their world is crude bestial and sometimes quite brutal with no shame of the consequences.

It seems like a bad idea to force a cat or dog to be vegetarians, They are evolved to be predators in the ecosystem. They have their own rightful and natural place doing so. Cats are quite happy content and free and love their place hunting birds and mice. They're lazy and weak indoors domesticated eating processed food.

If you really want to have vegetarian pets get some pet who is evolved to be vegetarian

horses, goats ,ponies, donkeys, sheep, geese . .. etcetera

That's really the best and only way to be the complete ethical vegan who claim you are, otherwise you're taking a predator animal as a pet who is built to digest meat as a staple part of his body and denying him is role in culling the herds of rodents and other vermin.

Sure some animals are natural born predators...but domestic cats aren't even naturally born...its all our fault. Guess what??? Killing for food is natural too...even for naturally vegan animals...should we do that too???

The word "nature" is kind of irrelevant in any discussion, since we don't live in a natural way now and haven't for many years, depending on how you use the word "natural". Nature involves rape, starvation, disease, early death due to poor nutrition, and no comforts like electricity, computers, cars, bikes etc.

If you were to really follow nature, then when you get ill, you wouldn't go to the doctor, if you broke your leg, you'd just deal with it, you wouldn't go to a store to buy food, you'd grow your own, and when it won't grow, you'd starve, and so on. I'm not saying that it's necessarily a bad way to live, it's just that people don't live that way anymore, in these modern societies. So to apply nature as a reasoning in this instance doesn't make much sense to me. I don't advise looking to "nature" for guidelines on ethics, nature is pretty brutal

Marcina wrote:They put scraps in human food too.What do you think hot dogs are made out of? LolThat's a staple for children these days.

Very true...even soy dogs are made of byproducts. I think the vegan stuff is a bit healthier though...of course most of it is crap

That's why I stick to whole foods lol.
I had a veggie burger yesterday cuz we had a big family barbecue..It was rather gross, actually hahaha! I had to disguise the flavor in sauces and veggies.

I think I pissed my mom off though because I was all "I wanna bbq mine first so i don't get meat juice on it" "I wanna use a seperate spatula" blah blah blah she thought I was being a bitch. I'm not, it just seems that way because she doesn't understand my with meat.
I heard her making fun of me behind my back too, and she didnt think I heard that. Now THAT is mean.

That is exactly why I don't do bbqs. I won't go near a grill that has meat on it. So then all I get to eat are chips, and possibly some vegetables like carrots, if they have any. Oh yeah and then there's always soda too lol. What a great nutritious meal!

The devotion of thought to an honest achievement makes the achievement possible.

I am a cat lover big time and know a lot about cats. Cats are Carnivores, to force them on a vegan diet is really doing them a huge injustice, it is not healthy for them. I am a Vegan mainly for Animal Right. So to force my cats on a vegan diet is taking away their right to eat meat.

Oh someone mentioned something along the line that we took cats out of their natural domain. Actually that is not accurate, reseach is showing that orginally Cats came to us, they seen a good thing I guess lol

I am in search of a organic cat food that they will eat though. I keep trying products that they don't care for. But willl keep searching because I don't want to contribute to abuse of our farm animals that was the whole point of going Vegan to begin with.

Oh to respond about BBQ's, I love them, my husband isn't going to give up meat just yet. What I love about bbq's is the enviroment, the fun that goes along with them. I just make myself an assortment of veggies to cook, I am happy

Although kind of gross to watch others nawing on meat, it is also a good opportunity to explain why I am not eating any of it.